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SIBIU, Romania — It's apparently not sufficient to be called the European Union.

EU leaders who gathered for a special summit on Europe Day proclaimed that they are "reunited in peace and democracy," "unanimously" in agreement to defend "one Europe," "united through thick and thin," committed to "show solidarity," "stand together," "speak with one voice," "always look for joint solutions," and "uphold shared values."

Not that anyone — ahem, cough, Britain — ever suggested otherwise.

Thursday's summit in the Transylvanian heartland was conceived as a grand symbolic gesture to show the EU is still standing after the departure of the first-ever member to quit the bloc. For better or worse, quitting has proved hard to do and the leaders (minus U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who didn't attend) were left grasping to find a purpose for their springtime gathering.

Normally, such a moment might be greeted as a welcome respite — a brief chance to catch their collective breath after a series of nearly unrelenting crises. But even before they assembled in Sibiu's elegant City Hall, built as the Land Credit Bank in 1906, talk turned to the extreme turbulence that lies just ahead, beginning with the European Parliament election in two weeks.

“I don’t feel bound at all by the principle of the Spitzenkandidat" — Emmanuel Macron

The election is projected to yield the most fragmented Parliament in the EU's modern history, with big advances by populist and far-right parties. The vote will then be followed by complex negotiations to fill virtually all of the EU's top jobs — the presidencies of the Commission, Council and Parliament, the foreign affairs chief, and the head of the European Central Bank.

In Sibiu, Council President Donald Tusk told leaders that he would convene them for a special summit dinner in Brussels on May 28, two days after the election, for their first formal deliberations on how to divvy up the top jobs — and that he would push for a result faster than the three months it took to reach a decision in 2014.

"Consensus is always better than voting, but I have no illusions that consensus will be easy or even possible," Tusk said, noting that the EU treaties allow for a decision by qualified majority voting. "And I will not wait three months looking for consensus."

Indeed, the very process by which EU leaders choose their top official — the European Commission president — is in dispute, with French President Emmanuel Macron declaring that he feels no obligation to follow the Spitzenkandidat or "lead candidate" system that envisions the European Council choosing the nominee of the party winning the most seats in Parliament.

“I don’t feel bound at all by the principle of the Spitzenkandidat," Macron said at a news conference in Sibiu.

Beyond the deliberations over top posts lies a potentially tortured negotiation to finalize the EU's next long-term budget — a process that hinges heavily on the unanswerable question of what will happen with the U.K. Speaking of which, the new Brexit cliff edge is set for October 31, a date that now seems just around the corner with no sign of progress in London.

"We reaffirm our belief that united, we are stronger in this increasingly unsettled and challenging world," the leaders declared in their formal summit statement. But it was the "unsettled and challenging" part that sounded most genuine.

Tusk also gave a hint of how on-guard he feels at the moment, holding up a pair of goalkeeper's gloves that he received as a gift from the retired Romanian football star, Helmuth Duckadam, who led his team to a European championship in 1986.

"This is what I received from Helmuth Duckadam yesterday," Tusk said, "along with a piece of advice about how to better defend our European interests."

If the landscape is unsettled, leaders hardly arrived in Sibiu pledging to calm it. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz hit Romanian soil and promptly declared the urgent need for a revised EU treaty — the Treaty of Lisbon, circa 2007, is now outmoded, he said — which is just about the single most controversial project the bloc could undertake.

Kurz, who at 32 is Europe's youngest national leader, also called for "generational change" at the top of the EU — an endorsement for Manfred Weber, the 46-year-old German MEP from Kurz's center-right European People's Party (EPP), as Commission president.

Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a pitch for an expanded role for Spain in the EU's upper echelons. Sánchez made clear that he wants a top job, possibly even the Commission presidency, to go to his current foreign minister, Josep Borrell, who is a former president of the European Parliament and currently heads the candidate list for their Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

The PSOE's umbrella group, the Party of European Socialists (PES), may not win enough seats in Parliament to claim the EU's top job. But as a negotiating tactic, it was a bold and deft move — potentially positioning Borrell for another top job, perhaps high representative for foreign affairs.

Other leaders were pointed in joining Macron to cast doubt on the lead candidate system.

“Ask my voters — they have no clue who’s the Spitzenkandidat,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said upon arriving at the summit. Bettel's predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, was the original Sptizenkandidat, being nominated by the EPP and successfully winning appointment to the job in 2014.

Bettel said that even Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, the lead candidate for the PES, is unknown in Luxembourg. “I’m so sorry to tell you but even Frans Timmermans, people in Luxembourg don’t all know what are the positions of Frans Timmermans,” he said.

Bettel, along with other leaders in his liberal party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), views the lead candidate system as unfairly favoring the EPP. In protest, ALDE has refused to nominate a single candidate and instead put forward a slate of seven that includes former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and the EU's Danish competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.

Tusk acknowledged that the system is a subject of disagreement and that the Council has already determined that legally it could not be bound by the system. Still, he said that the system is useful in helping to identify officials willing to serve in top EU jobs.

"This is the key, in fact, no automaticity — but goodwill," Tusk said. "We have to respect the fact that we have Spitzenkandidaten because this is a real political fact. In fact, I have in my notebook that the only public announced candidacies are Spitzenkandidaten. But of course it is not any kind of automaticity or formal or legal obligation and as we know we have some skeptics."

"Last time, it was about the process, this time it’s also about competition" — Manfred Weber

Macron is working with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Verhofstadt to form a new centrist political family that will replace ALDE. In a news conference after the summit, Macron said he had urged his fellow EU leaders to be more ambitious on numerous issues, particularly fighting climate change. On leadership decisions, he said he is more interested in "the best possible candidate."

“I don’t obsess over issues of nationality,” Macron said.

“We need to move faster now and with more determination on European renaissance,” Macron had said arriving in Sibiu. ("Renaissance" is the name the French president has given his own party's candidate list for the European Parliament election.)

Leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he is also focused more on issues than on nationality, but that means he could not support Weber, the conservative nominee. The Commission needs a president who supports “solidarity, democracy and social cohesion,” Tsipras said, adding: “That president is not Weber. That is my position.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her support for Weber but also conceded that his selection would not be treated as automatic by some of her colleagues on the Council.

“I support Manfred Weber, to make this very clear,” she told reporters after the summit.

Noting that the EU treaties pointedly require leaders to consider the results of the European Parliament election, Merkel said: "The European Council will have to make a proposal, and the European Parliament has to elect the Commission president by a majority of the votes. That means we need to interact with each other."

Weber, who was in Sibiu to take part in EPP events, said he is not concerned about the criticism of the system by some national leaders.

"They take it seriously, that’s good," he said.

He told reporters that he’s trying to “improve last time’s first-time experiences.” Referring to recent debates he has participated in with Timmermans, Weber said: “We showed real differences between the parties."

"Last time, it was about the process, this time it’s also about competition," Weber said. He also said he is unconcerned about a potential shadow candidacy by Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, saying he expected the EPP to honor the vote in Helsinki in November when Weber was chosen with nearly 80 percent support. "The whole party would be seen as a ridiculous institution if we didn't care about Helsinki any more," he said.

Juncker said he was glad to hold a summit in Sibiu even if the initial purpose of moving past Brexit was not realized. "I wanted you to fall in love with this city," he said at the closing news conference.

"Today's European Council was one of the easiest I have ever attended," Juncker said — a remarkable point given that he served on the Council for 19 years as prime minister of Luxembourg before joining in his current role. "There was no urgent decision to take," he added. "This was more a trial run for the European Council of June, but this Council nonetheless showed we are united, which wasn't just a façade."

And there was at least one piece of concrete evidence to back up Juncker's claim: leaders finished on time, at just before 6 p.m.